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Scientists from Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) in Vienna are underpinning the secrets behind the most fascinating human’s organ, the brain. By essentially growing brains from scratch, the researchers are able to better understand anomalies in neurological disease, including the physiology behind neurological pathologies such as Schizophrenia and Autism.

This new discovery published inNature will cool off our animal friendly reader because the research group lead by Jürgen Knoblich focuses strictly on human brain cells. In fact, it is well known that the use of animals in neuroscience studies is not always solid, due to the complexity of the human brain.

So, researchers at the IMBA produced a world-first faithful replica.

Until now, only very basic replicas of other organs have been produced (although there is the increasingly sophisticated ‘Organs-on-Chips’ party), but since now, none of them has been successfully applied to real brain human cells.